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Gordon Robertson: ‘One of the most influential civil servants of the modern era’

Gordon Robertson, pictured here in 2000 surrounded by memories of his long career as a civil servant, has died. Robertson was a former Clerk of the Privy Council, the top position in the public service, serving five prime ministers.Photo: Julie Oliver/Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — Two of the country’s top public servants sat side by side on a dock overlooking a river where the two had side-by-side cottages. One was senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, Bill Lawson, who oversaw monetary policy. The other was Gordon Robertson, the country’s top civil servant.

The conversation usually settled on the issues of the day, a must before taking a dip in the river.

“And sometimes the conversations went on in the river,” Robertson’s daughter, Kerrie Hale, said Wednesday.

The focus on issues facing the country dominated Robertson’s life for the better part of seven decades. Robertson, a man considered the most distinguished public servant of his generation, a former Clerk of the Privy Council who worked for over four decades on Parliament Hill, died Tuesday. He was 95.

Born in Davidson, Sask., halfway between Regina and Saskatoon, Robertson was a Rhodes Scholar who went to Oxford. He joined the federal public service in 1941 in what was considered a golden age for Ottawa mandarins, when senior bureaucrats exercised enormous influence over policy.

During his service, which ended with retirement in 1979, Robertson was involved in some of the largest policy debates, such as the constitutional conventions under Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, and controversial moments, such as the relocation of 17 Inuit families in the 1950s to Resolute Bay in the High Arctic from their historical home in northern Quebec.

He was once the top official in the Northwest Territories, becoming at the time of his appointment the youngest person to hold the position of commissioner, and the country’s first deputy minister of northern affairs, managing the aboriginal file for the better part of the 1950s.

His work gave him an intimate view of Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau and, briefly Joe Clark and Mackenzie King. Robertson built his political acumen on knowledge of history and the mistakes of the past, which helped him advise prime ministers and their cabinets, John Robertson said.

“To us he was just dad and to the rest of the nation, he was the guy at 2 o’clock in the morning when Pierre Trudeau and the cabinet decided on the War Measures Act, he was the one who announced it to the press,” John Robertson said.

Robertson, considered a gentleman by those who worked with him, worked long hours during the week as Clerk of the Privy Council, regularly went into the office on Saturdays, and was on the diplomatic cocktail circuit most nights with his wife Bea by his side — the two were married for 58 years before her death in 2001. Outside of work, he was an avid skier and fitness buff, keeping active well into his 70s.

“He didn’t lecture people about how to do things or what they should do. He simply set an example,” said John Robertson. “If you did something wrong, he didn’t chew you out. … He would sit down with you and work with you to fix it. That, to my mind, was a real measure of the man.”

It was his connection to the North that never left him, and which he detailed in his book, “Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant: Mackenzie King to Pierre Trudeau.” While at the helm of northern affairs, Robertson oversaw the relocation of 86 Inuit to Resolute Bay and Craig Harbour in what is now Nunavut, about 2,000 kilometres from Inukjuak in northern Quebec.

The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recommended the government apologize for the move and compensate the families who moved to the High Arctic between 1953 and 1955, which it did to the tune of $10 million. The government issued a statement saying that the officials in the department who orchestrated the move did so with honourable intentions.

In 2004, Robertson created a scholarship at Carleton University in Ottawa to help Inuit students gain a post-secondary education, almost around the time that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At the time, he told the Ottawa Citizen that he would like to be remembered for “having done what Mr. (Louis) St. Laurent asked me to do, which was to develop the kind of training and education for the people, particularly the native people in the North, who are going to have to govern themselves.”

A funeral is planned for Monday in Ottawa. He is survived by his two children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

“He wasn’t just a public servant,” Hale said from the family home in Ottawa. “And he was a passionate Canadian.”